Coop It Up

With hobby farming making a comeback, here are 3 musts for starting your own backyard chicken flock.

- Elizabeth Millard

Whether you have sprawling acreage that’s perfect for hobby farming or just a small clearing nestled up against the woods, adding chickens to your mix is always a fun consideration. And who doesn’t love free farm-fresh eggs?

Although you’ll need to pay attention to proper coop setup and make sure that your feeding/watering schedule is on track, raising chickens can be a low-maintenance, highly entertaining enhancement to your log home lifestyle. Here are three fundamentals that will get you started on the right foot:

1 Choose an appropriate flock

Often, it’s best to start a flock as chicks that grow up together. There’s a reason the term “pecking order” sounds so rough: Chickens create a definite hierarchy, and if you bring adult chickens from various flocks or locations together, you could see more fighting than you’d like.